Yours
by Gilded Blue
Summary: Vegeta has returned from Cell Games to find that his next greatest challenge is figuring out how to handle stupid Earthlings and their stupid, narrow-minded conception of parenthood (and that includes her stupid rejection of his perfectly valid suggestion that the child disciplined in a "torture chamber"), and their stupid feelings about feelings in general.


**Yours**

(And Mine)

 **Bed Time**

" _...Mama?"_

" _What's up, kiddo?"_

" _I got a question."_

A smile tugs at full lips.

" _Okay, shoot."_

" _So how did you and Papa_ really _get together?"_

The smile fades.

" _Oh, it's a silly story, Honey."_

" _Gramma says you're the best couple."_

Incredulous stare. These are the shifting expressions of Bulma Briefs, and _those_ are the curious eyes of her very young son. She doesn't know why in the world anyone would ever suggest such a thing about her relationship with Vegeta, so she needs a moment to process an acceptable answer for her two-year-old. Then: " _Trunks, Darling, what have I told you about your Grandma?"_

Trunks sits up, scooching up to lean against his headboard. His voice is energized by an opportunity to show off: _"That she's 'a_ crazy psycho face _with_ no detectable connection to reality'." He pronounced his syllables carefully.

" _And what else?_ " Bulma asks, drawing out her voice and cocking a brow at the incomplete recitation.

" _That her motivations for talking to me about Papa are nonsensical, indeterminable and furthermore questionable at best."_

With her hands on her hips, Bulma leans in a little bit, shaking her head, mommy-voice ready: _"So why don't you believe me, Sweetheart?"_

Trunks frowns, she pivoted, _again. "But_ she says that _**Papa said**_ _that he was going to_ **marry you** _and_ _ **everything**_!"

Bulma was hovering by the young boy's night-light. She was about to shut the overhead light off and flick the little light-up spaceship for him, a cool one she'd built for him herself with blue and yellow lasers in the shapes of stars rotating slowly across his ceiling. His eyes tell her that he's not going to let it go. It's hopeless, Trunks is completely enamored with Vegeta. She tried as hard as she could to get him to give up on their relationship. With Bunny's constant encouragement that he _'get to know Papa'_ , Trunks' favorite games involved driving his father up the wall. Vegeta was breaking things at a greater frequency than usual.

As a baby, Trunks' wailing nearly drove Vegeta to madness. She could still hear the echoes of Vegeta's groans of frustration, still naked in the bedroom when the baby woke up at night and she left his bed to "coddle the blasted infant" in the nursery. Or when he learned to crawl and _could not be kept away_ from the Gravity Chamber. She'd hired a full-time staff of humans and robots and no one could keep up with the little monkey. All he wanted to do was figure out what the big metal _thing_ was, why it was there, and who that (relatively) big, loud, scary man was. Trunks loved his father from the get-go, _unconditionally,_ even when Bulma herself could not fucking stand the man.

Now Trunks is a precocious toddler who can walk, speak, and spell. Not only did the little one count, he knew all of his alphabet and how to add and subtract simple numbers. If Vegeta weren't so obsessed with being a massive asshole, he'd likely be proud of his _first-born son's_ intelligence and strength. Most other babies were still learning their first words and Trunks was already forming complex sentences and learning to write them. She was infinitely pleased with the boy's progress, and he was so cute, yet she couldn't but regret that she only had a few blessed months before her little boy became an astute conversationalist, one with whom she regularly was obligated to engage with as young Trunks had tasked her, the Mama, _specifically,_ with the sole responsible of answering all of life's important questions. Given his present interests, current events dictated that most of these questions were about Vegeta. ' _Maybe it's a stage',_ she mused.

He's so stubborn, he's just like his damned father already. She moves through the room gracefully, but slowly enough to gather her thoughts, along with the raging feeling that she was going to have to have a word or two with her _darling mother,_ who had never quite understood her daughter's terrible fear of commitment to anyone, least of all did Bunny regard Bulma's reservations about Vegeta. _He's so popular around here._ She takes a deep breath when she sits at the edge of her baby's bed, gently pushing his bangs to the side of his far-more-reasonably-sized forehead, no thanks to a certain Saiyan prince. At least Trunks didn't take after his dad in every way. Vegeta was a prince, but he was by no means Prince Charming.

Truth is, Vegeta asked her to marry him again last night.

 **About a Year Ago:**

" **MAMA**! MAMA! HE'S GONNA **GET** ME!"

The first thing Bulma registered was her son's excited face when he rushed past her, hugging the back of her legs tightly. Already, his strength was so great that the toddler nearly pulled her backward on top of him. As he ran, he careened from one side to the other, barely able to stabilize himself. He was such a little firecracker. He looked at the doorway with intensity, waiting.

It was only a moment later when Vegeta barged in behind him with dramatic, thunderous footsteps, **"Damn it, Bulma, I told you to keep that damned child out of my way when I'm training and-"**

"And what, Vegeta? What exactly are you going to do, Tough Guy, kill a toddler?!" Already irritated, Bulma's arms were crossed over her arms in an instant as the pair stared each other off with sharp, hard glares. Trunks gazed from behind Bulma's knee at his mother, then at Vegeta and back again a few times in the tense seconds, fascinated with the pair.

"I will not be interrupted!" Vegeta insists, flexing a little bit for reasons Bulma can't fathom. He's not fooling anyone. "I will not be taunted, and I will **not wait** for you to finish coddling him before you fix the damn machine your incompetent brain apparently is incapable of properly securing!"

She's unmoved by his shouting, trying to register from keywords what his psycho problem is, anyway. "What happened?" Bulma turned around, swooping her son into her arms. As she did so, Trunks turned around a little bit to stick his tongue out at Vegeta. She pretends she doesn't notice, but she actually thinks this is quite funny. The look of rage on Vegeta's face gratifies her more than she'd care to admit.

Stupefied by his fury, Vegeta points an angry, shaking finger at the boy, "Look at what he just did! He's a spoiled brat!" Trunks frowns.

"I don't know what you're talking about, I picked him up so he wouldn't **bother you** anymore, Vegeta, make up your mind, would you rather I let him walk around?"

"It hardly matters now that he's got you to hide behind! There was a place we put insolent little brats in on Planet Vegeta, and it was-"

" **Well,** we're _not_ on Planet Vegeta, we're nowhere near Planet Vegeta, so I guess none of that matters." Bulma interrupted sticking her nose in the air haughtily. "What matters is why you're running around shouting like a crazy person."

The veins on Vegeta's rather broad forehead were protruding. The rippling muscles were well-defined in his training suit, with his favorite style armor covering his chest. She made them for him now, but they were always in the same style of the battle armor he'd grown accustomed to on Namek. He rolled his eyes and scoffed at her, "You're an idiot, your brat child is an idiot, and every. single. day. he manages to **get into** my training room, or he **wails outside,** or maybe **he just fucking BREAKS it!"**

His teeth are showing. Bulma is still fairly unimpressed even though he shouts so loudly that she can _feel_ it; Vegeta is all bark and no bite. There was a time when his raving and breaking things (guess it runs in the family) sometimes scared her or made her cry. Now she knew better. Anything other than cool sarcasm allowed him to win, which was never an option.

"It's not my fault that he's curious, Vegeta."

"Of course it is, you stupid woman! You're the one who is supposed to be watching him! **You're** the one who is so fucking fond of the thing that you insist on keeping it around here! On Planet Vegeta, the younglings were all kept in early training facilities and insolent little brats like **that one,** " menacing glare at young Trunks, who looks back at him from under his fingers, "were-"

"-were kept in torture chambers, I know, I know," Bulma said, rolling her eyes. "You are such a crazy person," she added, waving a hand of dismissal at Vegeta. As a show of disinterest, she shifts Trunks from her left hip to her right. The young man wraps his arms around his mother's neck. He doesn't really know what they're saying, but it's loud and he knows Vegeta's angry. Despite the toddler's interest in Vegeta, their relationship remained adversarial. This is not saying much; Vegeta's relationship with most things has always been adversarial. Including his relationship with Bulma. To the baby's credit, it seemed to have been more interested in _Vegeta_ than he was in _making Vegeta angry._ The two things seemed to run hand-in-hand.

"Crazy person!" He finds her to be relentlessly stupid right now, which amuses him a little bit because _she thinks she's so smart_ even though she's a **stupid fucking human** and the stupid fucking humans could barely even travel around within their solar system. He didn't even know why he was attracted to her in the first place, or what caused him to mate with her, or how he ever could have allowed himself to come crashing down so stunningly into **this** big fat pile of shame and failure.

Bulma nods with a blank face. This is very simple. Calm down and go away. "Yes, Vegeta, you're acting like a complete insane person."

"You're an insolent woman and he's an insipid little beast!" Vegeta's

"What are you even having a _heart attack_ over anyway, you psycho?" She scoffs and rolls her eyes, looking at Trunks. In a baby tone, "His veins are popping and everything! Pop! Pop! Pop! Can you say 'pop', Trunks?"

Trunks gurgles a bit, a sound deeply disturbing and even disgusting to Vegeta, which makes him flinch, which makes Bulma nuzzle the child all the longer as Trunks giggles and says, "Pop! Pop! He's got **popping veins!** "

"That's right, Sweetie, that's why he's so-"

" **Enough you stupid idiot!"** He'd had sex with _that_ woman. The one glaring at him, child in arms, accusing him of overreacting in a discipline-necessary situation, again, as per usual, on this stupid planet. Bulma notes that she has to explain to him at another time that calling someone a 'stupid idiot' is more redundant than threatening. Vegeta is still raging: "He **broke** my only means of training on this goddamn stupid planet!"

"Yeah, and we're all very sad about that, Vegeta. I'm sure the _baby_ did so much damage."

"He pulled the fuse cable and it nearly exploded! The child's just as stupid as you and the rest of the stupid fucking humans are, he nearly killed himself along with your awful contraption!"

Bulma's eyes narrow. She made a mental note to keep more eyes on Trunks at all times. "Sounds like you took care of it, I didn't hear any explosions."

"That's because **your son** forced me to **rip out** the main power frame!" Vegeta crosses his arms over his chest with satisfaction, "You're welcome." For the record, there _had been_ a small explosion, which Vegeta knocked the stupid child away from and absorbed the blast itself, which definitely also shitted up his armor, but he would have her tend to that later, and if stupid Bulma had any observational skills whatsoever, she would have been able to see from his disheveled appearance that something definitely happened. A stupid, low-level scout could have seen the slight char at the tip of his hair or the scratches on his chest plate.

Bulma is not worried about how Vegeta's armor looks.

"' **You're welcome!'** What!" Her jaw drops. "You did **what?!** It's going to take me a week to build another-"

"Oh, **no,** it's not-"

"Hi there, you two!" Cheery as ever, Bunny Briefs approaches the two. She's balancing a tray of cupcakes in one hand and she sets it on Bulma's writing desk, gently pushing aside Bulma's newest plans for a luxury plane with her free hand. Bulma gets so fussy when her silly little blueprints get mucked up. Vegeta's a little weirded out by Bunny, mostly because no matter what, she is **so. damn. cheerful.** No amount of raging of ki-balls, or throwing things has ever made her do much more than blink or shake her head and sigh. "Yanno, Bulma had **the absolute worst** hissy fits too, when she was a girl. I get it, you young people these days, you've all got to get your _passion_ out."

"Mother." Bulma rubs her forehead, still holding Trunks tightly against her bust."Why don't you-"

"-and did I tell you about the time when she was a teenager and she started **screaming** because I brought Yamcha a plate of cheese danishes when she brought him over? Why, when I was a girl, it was _scandalous to invite a gentleman to call,_ but you know, you young people, so forward, I mean you've been _living here,_ but anyhoo, Bulma _threw a fit_ and-"

" **Mother!** " Bulma hissed, " _Why don't you_ go ahead and take Trunks to his play room and start his lessons?"

"Oh, Bulma, Dear, you're so rude, don't interrupt! I was telling Vegeta about-"

"What? I don't-" Vegeta interjected, because he thought it prudent that all parties know that he _absolutely did not fucking care._

Bulma sighed, "You guys take the cupcakes and go! Apparently I've got to go check out this thing."

"Oh well, I'll tell you some other time, Vegeta, Dear, you two have a lovely time!" That's all Bunny wanted to hear. She swept Trunks into her arms and they left, each with a cupcake in hand. She left the rest on the platter even though Bulma told her to not. She dropped her cupcake in Vegeta's open palm. "Grandma's got more, don't you worry. Here's a little sugar to sweeten your mood!"

With a wink, Bunny was gone. Vegeta stared at the pastel pink icing and stupid little cherry garnish as if it were The Plague, the really awful one that wiped out like several thousand soldiers when it swept through Frieza's army in his early teens. It frightened him. The cupcake, not death.

Bulma turned around, sighing, "Okay, Tough Guy, I'll go check it out in a moment."

"You'll check it out now." He insists, not looking away from the cupcake. It's got sprinkles on it. Who even puts sprinkles on cupcakes anymore? The cherry, fine, it's a cherry, she puts a cherry on top of anything she can, but sprinkles? How obscene. They were all glittery. _Ugh, Bulma's mother is such a bizarre creature._

He didn't even know why she gave it to him! He always rejected her stupid little treats! What was he even supposed to _do_ with it? God, it was so garish and disgusting.

She's digging around for stuff instead of listening to Vegeta, which is probably for the best. He's still standing there, looking like an idiot with a cupcake in his hand. He wants to throw it, he wants to break everything in the stupid woman's lab so that she'll stop doing whatever she's doing and go attend to the chamber. He huffs and inhales a bit of the stupid fucking cupcake. It's sweet. It's _obscenely_ sweet. It's like, a cherry buttercream frosting over a rich chocolate cupcake. That's actually not a bad combination. Still, so sweet. Unlike Saiyan cuisine. He still considers throwing the cupcake. On principle. It _was_ wrapped in an attractive red foil. It actually sort of reminded him of the color of blood, which was a little bit soothing at this particular juncture.

Since she's not looking, he sniffs it a little more closely, taking it up close to his nose to breathe in the aroma. Bulma turns around exactly as he is regarding the cupcake with interested suspicion. She raises a brow.

"Don't let me interrupt your snack, it's _to sweeten your mood,_ remember?" She asks with a sarcastic grin before turning to look back to the filing cabinet she'd been ravaging through. The image of Vegeta sniffing her mother's cupcake and regarding it with wide-eyed wonder was forever burned in her memory.

Incensed, he squeezes the cupcake and where does the frosting go but on his _freaking face._ And in his mouth. And it's good. Sweet, sweeter than most things he'd enjoyed (he liked spiced meats the best, especially when he could hunt what he ate first). Buttery. Creamy. Rich. Sugary. Goodness. He looked to Bulma, who was still bent over, laughing and not much paying attention to him as he'd been silenced by the mess, and he quickly swallowed the rest of the cupcake, _foil and all,_ which he immediately regretted, because it tasted terrible and the rest of it was great, before Bulma could look up and inspect the pink frosting hanging off of his nose.

"Okay, Tough Guy, I got the plans for the Gravity Chamber and the main power frame so I can start the repairs this afternoon... are you okay?"

Vegeta flushed, wiping the remnants from the ridiculous cupcake situation away from his face, and he said the first thing that came to mind, "It was in my way!"

"...The cupcake?" Bulma cocked a brow, confused. She gestured towards the tray her mother had left.

Vegeta flushed and made a grunt. It was time to take charge of this awful situation. "I just said that you'll start the repairs now!"

"Vegeta," Bulma said, resting a hand on her hip, "I'm very busy, I've got a meeting with my dad and some investors tomorrow and I'm not done with the-"

"Why should I care about your stupid-"

"Because the very fact that I'm rich and brilliant has given you that _amazing_ piece of technology, which you regularly abuse-"

"Abuse! **Your son-** "

"Look, I said I'd fix it, even if I started a new guy right now, it wouldn't get you back in the chamber until this evening."

"All the more reason to get to it!"

"No, all the more reason to let me finish what I'm _doing_ so that I don't get pissed off and just leave you hanging!"

"Here's a reason to go fix it: if you don't, I will **blow up this entire fucking laboratory along with you and everything-** "

"Vegeta, I'm certainly not going to _reward_ that behavior!"

"Then go fix it!"

Enraged, Bulma shouts, **"All right, you asshole! God!"** Suddenly, she's throwing shit around and she can't even handle it, "Do you even ever stop?"

Plans in hand, she marches past Vegeta, heading towards the south part of the compound, where the Vegeta's Gravity Chamber waited for her loving touch in the back yard. Vegeta, pleased, examined Bunny's silver platter with more inviting treats.

He takes a wary step towards the desk, looking around to see if Bulma's lurking around anywhere.

He pick up another cupcake and examines it.

Pink frosting. Cherry. Same red tin covering. ' _Is that some sort of stupid earthling garnish? It's disgusting._

He considers just taking a bite out of the top, and just eating the icing. But not a sufficient amount of the sweet chocolate bread! Damn Bunny Briefs and her bizarre concoctions!

...Still, better than army rations.

He'd kept some in his room in case Bulma ever tried to poison him or starve him out.

He shrugs, and closes his eyes and nearly swallows the second cupcake whole before an unexpected little someone tugs at Vegeta's spandex. He's pretty interested in the spandex. "You! What do _you_ want? Where's your wretched nurse _now?!_ "

Trunks takes a cupcake from the table and looks at Vegeta with intensity. Then, "Wrong way!" Trunks peals the foil off of the cupcake, setting it delicately to the side on the platter.

Vegeta blinked. Then, he felt very, very stupid.

Trunks threw the whole cupcake in his little mouth, icing smearing on the sides of his cheeks. With a cold chill running down his spine, he could only compare Trunks' messy eating to that of Kakarot. His son ate like... like...

Trunks was actually quite like Bulma, insofar as it was not acceptable to merely _show_ Vegeta how to eat the cupcake. With another tug, the boy seemed to urge him to try it.

Slowly, Vegeta pulled the foil away and looked at it. The cupcake indeed was more inviting now. The system finally made sense. It was still a stupid process and _anyone_ could have thought it was a stupid garnish, anyway! With a stern look, he balled the foil in his fist and threw it defiantly on the lab floor.

"Messy!" Trunks stated, staring at the ball on the floor and gesturing to the platter.

Vegeta sneered.

"Wrong way!" Trunks stomped his foot on the ground, a little more insistent.

"Look, kid, everything I do is **right.** " Vegeta responded loudly.

A pause.

"It right way?" Trunks asked, frowning. Even so, his big blue eyes looked... convinced. Vegeta's stomach churned. _Oh, God, why is this happening? It doesn't even communicate._

Annoyed, Vegeta repeated, "Right way!" Before Trunks could answer, he turned his back to the child and stormed out to find Bulma and check on the progress of his machine.

Trunks looked at the red ball on the floor for a few long seconds before taking his own foil, balling it up, and also throwing it on the floor with a look that sought to match Vegeta's.

He looked at the trash, shrugged, and ran back to the nursery with the platter excitedly to find his grandmother and tell her she was right and she _had_ left the cupcakes in Mom's lab!

 **That Evening: **

Bulma scooped her son into her arms and he was engulfed in a massive mama-bear hug. "Oooh, I love you, I love you, I love you!"

Trunks snuggled against his mother, returning the hug.

"Are you going to have good dreams tonight, Sweetie?"

Trunks grinned and nodded, letting her set him in his bed. He'd just graduated from crib to 'big-boy bed', mostly at his own insistence, and he soaked in the difference. "Mama?"

Bulma looked up, smoothing out the sheet over him, "What's up?"

"Who that guy?" Trunks asked, yawning.

"'Who _is_ that guy'." Bulma corrected, "What guy?"

Trunks closed his eyes, "That big guy."

She had to laugh, "What, Vegeta? That's Vegeta, you know that."

Trunks rolled onto his side, trying to fight the sleep, "But Gramma say he…" Another yawn, "...my _Papa."_

Bulma froze. Vegeta had pretty much only returned from space at the eleventh hour when Goku and their other friends were fighting the Androids and Cell. After all that mess, he'd stuck around, but things were tense as ever. Her one year old was amiable to Vegeta's existence, and also extremely curious about it. He'd never really asked about who his father was or where his father was before, he was always happy to have Mama, and Gramma, and Granpa.

"Mama?" He wants an answer.

Bulma swallowed, "Well, uh, I mean, it's, he's, he's _Vegeta._ I mean, sure, you can call him… I mean, I guess you could call him... that."

Interested, Trunks continues, "He my daddy?"

"Well… he is your… father." Bulma acknowledged, slowly. She recalled telling Trunks this a few times when he was a baby, and yet she'd insisted on everyone just calling Vegeta by name when he returned and spitefully renounced them. He surely didn't want to be Trunks' father, why break the poor kids' heart?

Despite all of this, her mother went ahead and told him behind her back. Great. (There is a pattern of Bunny injecting herself in her daughter's romantic relationships, but to her defense she insists that Bulma's getting just a _little too old_ to keep being a _single_ mother.)

"But… I don't know, Trunks, you know, you really messed up his favorite toy today. He's pretty cheesed off about it, I'd let Vegeta be."

She'd have to talk to Vegeta. She had no idea how he would handle their son running around calling him 'daddy', although she wondered why she even felt the need to prompt Vegeta to be a _decent_ person and be nice to his own kid.

"But he eated sweets with me!" Trunks insisted, starting from his bed.

Bulma raised a brow, "What?"

"He did!"

"Vegeta?"

"Yeah!"

"...The guy with the pointy black hair, who yelled at you today in my lab?"

"Yeah!" Trunks smiled, bright as she'd ever seen it, and added, "That guy!"

 _That guy._

Bulma frowned, and after a pause asked, "I'm sorry, he did what?"

"It's fun!" Trunks giggled. Bulma shook her head a little, still unsure of what exactly her son was talking about, and she tucked her son in. She kissed him goodnight, and turned out the light. She left him in a room with shining stars, and his dreams of Vegeta.

When she returned to her lab, she could tell by the tiny dents made from tin foil balls thrown repeatedly on the metal panels making up the floor that Vegeta _had taught Trunks something._ Well, that's not exactly her idea of an ideal father-son bonding experience, but she'd take it.

Rolling her eyes, she turned on the cleaner bot to the side, releasing it from its charging station, and let it load before it quickly went to work at the pile of foil balls that her son had left for her. "When you're done, be a doll and take the stupid platter back to the kitchen, will you?" She asked the machine absently, turning back to the plans on her desk.

The bright red cherry on top of the very last cupcake called to her. With a sigh, she took it and began to peel away the foil. She didn't have a plate and fork, so she ate it as quickly as she could, licking the frosting off of her fingers, scooping the remaining icing from her bottom lip and sucking on it like she was still a kid.

 _So Vegeta likes cupcakes, huh?_

He'd always refused them before.

Bulma examined the discarded foil. Without really thinking about it, she balled it up and looked at it. She tossed it on the floor, as if trying to figure out what had amused Trunks so much about the whole game, and the bot turned to her, as if to scold her.

"Uh, sorry," she said, sheepishly.

It sucked up the remaining ball that she'd thrown down and then lifted its claws to take the tray and zoom off towards the kitchen.

Bulma was lost in finalizing her report. She was going to make a customized version of the plane for herself, as an early birthday gift, and the general plan was going to be the new model for the Capsule Corporations plane.

Vegeta appeared late in the night, as he had nearly every evening before the dawn since he'd returned from the battle with Cell. They shared a bed for a few hours, and he returned to his lonely little room for a few more hours of sleep before he woke up and began to train.

"Well, if it isn't the father of the year," she said, eyeing him when he came to her, looking for love even if he'd never admit it. Maybe he'd wished for something greater, and it compelled him to seek her out, if for no other reason than to have an existence that focused on more than training to be the strongest.

Vegeta made a weird sound in response, and Bulma sighed. It approached something like acknowledgement, but it wasn't really enough.

"I see you taught our son how to misbehave," she continued in a bored tone, ignoring Vegeta's wandering hands as she continued to glance at her pages, "I'm frankly flattered that you took the time out of your busy day to show my clean son how to make a big mess in his mom's lab."

Vegeta blinked. He had no clue what Bulma was even talking about.

Perhaps he was not doing a good job at explaining the intent behind his visit. Hands square on her shoulders, he turned her around to look at him.

"You're such a great example, remember when like the third thing he learned to say was 'damn it'?" She asked, switching over to the next page. She wasn't really reading anything, at this point she was going to need to go in and actually make some repairs and the new metal for the back panel wasn't going to be ready until the morning anyway.

Vegeta was there. She was there. Just two adults, standing kind of close to each other, who happened upon each other in the same places at the same times and yet the conversations rarely felt less awkward than they did from the very first day she took him inside of her home.

"I hear some people keep little talking birds as pets. They repeat things mindlessly as well." Vegeta sneered, crossing his arms over his chest. He's really proud of himself for that one.

"He asked who his father was today."

Vegeta nodded, "Hmn."

"So?" She asked, raising her hands up to exaggerate the question.

"What?"

Bulma punched him in the chest out of irritation. Vegeta was disappointed; it was not a very good punch. Kakarot's wife could at least land a decent punch. If the child ended up weaker than _stupid Gohan,_ it would be because _she_ was weaker than Kakarot's stupid wife. His thoughts returned to Bulma, if for no other reason because she was still thumping at him.

" **What?** "

"Tell me what you want me to tell him, Stupid!"

Vegeta looked confused. He did not know why he was being asked this question. Humans have such odd customs when it comes to parenting. The few parenting suggestions he did make, like telling her about the mass nurseries and the discipline chambers, fell on deaf ears. He said the first thing that seemed true: "I don't care."

Bulma looked more determined than before, "Well, you know, since you were _going to let us die in battle-_ "

Oh, God, not _that,_ again. Vegeta was quick to interrupt: "If you didn't want to _die_ , why didn't you just stay the fuck-"

"I expect you to protect your family, Vegeta!"

"There were plenty of fighters around, I didn't want to be distracted by your foolish sentimentalism!"

"It is _not_ sentimental to go to watch you save the planet when we're potentially all about to die!"

Vegeta stared at Bulma for a moment, mostly because she was _insane_ to him, for just asking to be collateral damage in situation after situation. She just followed around Kakarot and hoped that everything would all turn out. Her blind faith in _Goku_ seemed to make it seem perfectly fine for her to go fluttering about in her big, loud machines, asking to die and then getting all huffy when _he didn't try to play the hero._ "I did not come back to fight Cell or those stupid robots out of some fanciful interest in _you_ or _the child._ " He also did not come back to save her and the child, for the sake of it, as some carefully framed gesture she set him up for.

"Then what were you fighting for, Vegeta, and why are you still here?" Bulma glared at him, jerking away. This is the great romance that her mother bragged about. She didn't really know why she was even bothering. She could come up with the answers _for him._ He had nowhere else to go, and the closest thing to a not-Trunks friend Vegeta had was Goku, whom he did mostly seem to hate.

Her eyes dragged down to his perfectly toned chest, bare, fresh from the shower, and she reconsidered. He _was_ handsome, but he was also very weird.

Vegeta did not appreciate this line of questioning and he remained silent.

Bulma sighed, nearly hissing from the irritation, "What do you want to do about Trunks? He _loves_ you, Vegeta, and if you're going to stay here, you might as well be a father to your son."

Vegeta didn't say anything, he just nodded. This is the point at which Bulma made the executive decision to give into Bunny's pushing for her to have Trunks _be aware of_ his father. Eventually. Preferably, with nuance.

They didn't speak of it for the rest of the night. His cold silence confused her, and more often than not, it left her feeling alone and rejected. She didn't even _want_ him to be some sort of… husband, father, soccer-dad, whatever… for her, or Trunks. He was just _Vegeta._ He was just there.

He touched her with a sense of wild possession, and when they had sex, she could almost feel herself melting into his arms. Vegeta's chest told the stories of a million horrors. _He really has been through it all._

She has no idea. Vegeta has been to Hell. He enjoys the finer things in life. He doesn't want to hear any more complaints. Most people are taller than Vegeta, and yet Bulma is just below his eye level. He takes a step closer to her, staring her down as if preparing for a fight. Vegeta was so _present,_ intent on what he was doing and even measured in the amount of weight he used when he let his hands wander from her breasts down her abdomen to her waist.

He's so fast that she doesn't even see him when he steps behind her, pressing his growing erection against her backside. Bulma shivers. It drives her _crazy_ when he does things like that. He's in front of her one moment, and then he's behind. He's touching her, lifting her, floating with her with power most people could only dream of having. Vegeta loved that showing off was _so easy._

She gave in; his hands guided her hips. They silently made their way to her bedroom suite, the door opened, and her lips were over his in a second. He didn't really get kissing, it was a more human thing to do. Even so, Vegeta relished the attention she gave to his body. She loved muscles, she couldn't help it-Yamcha, Goku, nearly every friend and boyfriend she'd had was muscular and now, Vegeta in her bed, she felt so hot in his powerful arms. She pressed her lips against every scar, sometimes asking where they came from.

He'd laugh, letting her play with his body lazily, and sometimes he would answer just to watch her reaction: "I was shot in the side with a spear. There was a toxin in the atmosphere, I was exposed. It got pretty infected, so I ripped most of it out."

"Your… flesh?"

Nod.

"Didn't that hurt?"

A grin, because he's pleased with himself, "True warriors don't experience pain."

She traced it with a finger. He was beautiful. "I guess they really got you."

Vegeta laughed, "That's nothing compared to what I did to _those fools._ "

It made her shiver. She didn't even know why. He was definitely bragging about hurting other people. He flipped her onto her knees, pressing his chest against her arched back, whispering the awful things he did to the forgotten peoples of the stupid planet who dared to defy him. He took her from behind, tugging at her hair, grinning as she groaned into her sheets. " _I decapitated their captains one-by-one and watched them beg for mercy before I slaughtered them all anyway."_

Sometimes, he just _said things._ Vegeta… came from a different world. He murmured things darkly against her ear while she wriggled underneath him, allowing him to manipulate her body to their mutual pleasure. " _You're pretty mouthy but after I finally got you on your knees, you seemed worth keeping around..."_

She shivered again, pressing herself closer to him, and he smirks down at her.

He really did find her beautiful, soft in the moonlight, with lips wide open in pleasure, gasping one moment and grabbing on to his shoulders or scalp to anchor herself as she moved over his body.

They moved with each other, intent, until Bulma moved away, shielding her breasts just barely with her arms, looking at him honestly, naked, and she considered asking him if he was even going to stick around this time, which also seemed relevant to the subject of their uh, _unique_ family situation. Vegeta just shrugged.

Her heart dropped. She'd hoped to never consider Vegeta family. He _didn't know how to have a family._ Besides, a part of her wondered if Vegeta was really _it_ for her.

 **Present Day: Evening**

She'd dodged Trunks' question about the marriage, and spent most of the evening recalling various things Vegeta'd done to tick her off. It helped her resist the near-constant pressure she received from her mother to _hurry up and get serious with that wonderful Vegeta already._ Maybe Vegeta _had_ returned from the battle with Cell a better man, but he certainly hadn't applied for sainthood yet.

Bulma tapped her pen on her desk, vaguely recalling the evening in which she came back to her lab to find a mess of red foil balls and cupcake crumbs all over the floor. She'd been annoyed at first, but now she thought of the moment and wished she could have been a fly on that wall. The now-infamous moment in which Trunks somehow got his father to engage with him, _directly._ And, my, was that boy a sponge.

Just a year later, Trunks was a feisty as ever and he loved his father with everything he had. He was so, so impressed with the guy. Even when Bulma thought Vegeta was being the worst, Trunks idolized his father.

She felt like she was nowhere closer to figuring out how to raise Trunks to be realistic about his father while also protecting him from the pain that could come with it. Maybe instead of embracing a life as _Vegeta's wife,_ it would be better to get out there and start dating again. Before Trunks gets too old. She certainly couldn't _replace_ Vegeta for Trunks, but maybe she could find her _real_ great life romance if she wasn't so busy yelling at Vegeta. Or at least she _could get some work done._

She rubbed her head, she just didn't know.

It wasn't that he asked, it was _the way_ he did it.

Vegeta's voice was ringing in her ears, the words he'd said the previous evening, " _Well, then, do you want to or not?"_

She responded with quick anger and left in a huff, telling him to forget it.

Bulma shook her head, no, Vegeta wouldn't even say the word "marriage", he was offering her something that didn't even _mean_ anything to him. Vegeta was ready to be serious with her, or at least he _sort of_ said something, if for no other reason because he was going to stay on earth and monitor the other fighters and Saiyans. He was especially keen on waiting for Goku's return. He seemed intent on being more powerful, should Goku ever decide to come back to the world of the living- or if he should die and join Goku in the other world.

Bulma remembered when she was far less cynical about love, when she wanted a boyfriend more than anything and she found one in a lonely orphan. Yamcha wasn't as strong as Goku was when they were kids which was sort of weird to Bulma, but she remembered how hard and fast she fell in love. And then, the fighting. Jealousy. Stupid bickering.

Yamcha brought up marriage too, telling her that, well, maybe it was time they you know, settled down. The same feeling in the pit of her stomach erupted, _but how could this be it?_ A martial artist so outclassed by their friends that he was hardly relevant anymore. An amateur athlete who couldn't stay alive long enough to progress. Yamcha was still struggling to find his place in the post-Goku world, and she felt eerie guilt when they Vegeta did come up in conversation.

Most people on most days found some way to ask her about Vegeta.

A life of monogamy, with _Vegeta?_ She could hardly imagine what that would look like. Vegeta'd run off every man she dated in the year he was gone. He was _furious._ It's hard to try to find Mr. Right or even settle on the idea of _wanting_ a Mr. Right when Vegeta lived with her and sucked so much of her energy up every day. She would never have any chance to look for any other person. Even Yamcha distanced himself, slowly but surely.

 _And, Vegeta called her old when he did it._

" _Well, what the Hell are you doing trying to sleep with everything that moves, anyway, when you're clearly_ past your prime?" He asked as she stormed off, sneering at her.

 ** _"Anyone's better than you!"_**

Bulma cringed. Vegeta had a hot ass, was cute when he was angry, and his chest was like a rock. He was a very attractive, passionate former killing machine. Despite her mother's insistence, that hardly seemed to make for a great husband, especially when he was so nonchalant about the entire thing.

He didn't even _know_ what marriage was, or why people would ever want to do that. She could just hear herself, echoing on and on in her head, when she said:

" _God, Vegeta, you're such an idiot."_

" _Seriously, why the Hell would anyone ever want to_ _ **do that?**_ _"_

That was a while ago, the first time he'd asked (sort of).

She leaned back in her chair, absorbed in a memory. It went a little like:

 _Vegeta was eating after a particularly rigorous training episode, followed by a particularly vigorous lovemaking episode. "Humans mate."_

 _It was a thoughtful sentence._

 _Bulma cocked a brow. "Yes."_

" _Kakarot took a human wife."_

 _This was getting interesting. Bulma nodded, "Yeah, he was a little weirded out by the wedding, but when he's alive, I hear they're okay."_

" _And he had no other sons?" Vegeta asked, eating. It wasn't unlike Goku and Gohan, and yet Vegeta took food a little more slowly. He was certainly more refined. "He exclusively lives with his wife."_

" _Yeah, he's_ married, _Vegeta."_

" _So… he lives with her?"_

 _Bulma blinked, "That's… part of it."_

" _What else?"_

" _Well, technically, a ton of legal things like the sharing of finances and medical power of attorney, but also they take care of the house together and raise Gohan together."_

" _You're a better wife, I suppose."_

 _Bulma nearly choked on her coffee. "You… want to get married?"_

" _Aren't we already? I'm here. You have the child." Vegeta did not look up from his meal._

 _She was somewhat off-put by his casual manner. "No, we have to have a_ wedding _and we would certainly have to talk about Trunks-"_

" _What the hell is a wedding?"_

" _We'd have a big ceremony performed officiating our love and commitment to each other in front of all of our… or, I guess in this case,_ _ **my**_ _family and friends."_

 _There weren't many words in Bulma's last sentence that didn't gross Vegeta out, so he put his snack down. "What an odd custom."_

" _You're the one who wants to get married."_

" _Your mating ceremonies seem bizarre. I'm not a human, anyway." A dismissive wave of the hand._

" _...Did you just propose and then un-propose to me?"_

 _Vegeta thought about it, and with an antagonistic grin and a nod, he said, "Yes."_

" _Wow, Vegeta, I wasn't even going to say yes and I still think that's a dick move."_

" _Well, you did such a great job selling the whole ordeal."_

" _I figured you'd know what a wedding is."_

" _I thought we were already mated by your customs."_

" _No, not quite." Bulma said, inspecting his face. What an odd man. "Were you just going to ask me to get married because it's what Goku did?"_

" _You already cook and clean for me like his woman does, I thought that was it."_

" _Goku married ChiChi when he was pretty young."_

 _Vegeta sort of shrugged, so Bulma grabbed a tablet on her desk and flipped through to an old photo album. She handed it to Vegeta. "This is his wedding. It's like a big party, it more or less marks the marriage 'start' period."_

 _Vegeta's eyes bulged, "What a hideous event. Is he trying to mount her through his clothes?" Vegeta gestures towards an image of the couple dancing. "What the Hell is even happening?"_

" _God, Vegeta, you're an idiot."_

" _Seriously, why the Hell would anyone ever want to_ _ **do that**_ _?"_

" _What, dance?"_

 _With a look of distaste, Vegeta pushed the tablet to the side and went back to his meal. "Any of it."_

Truth is, Vegeta's had a lot longer than Bulma had, literally, to think over the family matters. The time he spent training in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, with _his son,_ absorbed in his desire to become stronger, Vegeta could hardly stand the idea of being a father, but he was one, tied to a woman from Earth. Although becoming some sort of domesticated Earthling grossed him out, to his fiery, brooding core, he was content with the idea of continuing things as they were with Bulma. The boy would one day grow into a young warrior. His mother was the only one in the entire world who could give Vegeta the things she did: a close, yet antagonistic relationship with Kakarot, the necessary intelligence to provide a consistent training experience on Earth, and adequate transportation elsewhere. She was wealthy, beautiful, and clever. She made him laugh when she wasn't too busy trying to piss him off.

Vegeta, with two sons? One son? A potential warrior, at the very least. A son destined to exist, to have been born to him _and Bulma._ With ridiculous, _very un-Saiyan-like_ purple hair. This one was far more uninteresting than the older iteration, who was not particularly interesting himself. At least that one was toilet trained. The time he spent with the older boy, from the future, softened him to the idea of training, at least with the older one. He had a personality. It was a _terrible, needy_ personality, but he wasn't quite as bad as a gibbering toddler. On the plus side, future Trunks wasn't _Gohan._ Ending Cell was a _disaster._

Saiyans didn't really _parent._ Perhaps Bulma would understand the massive cultural differences. (Bulma did not really care about the massive cultural differences. Bulma was a demanding woman.)

Truth is, Vegeta's heart hadn't just been _broken,_ it was pulverised, repeatedly, until it shriveled up into a little black bit of coal, which seemed to amuse Frieza well enough, and things were all going pretty okay for Vegeta while he was biding his time until he could become strong enough to kill Frieza and usurp the Cold Empire for himself. Then, he wouldn't even need a stupid heart, or a family, and the few times he'd thought about it that far ahead, he sort of darkly figured that he would either die defending his throne to some younger warrior or even perhaps allow civil war to erupt in the wake of his death. That would be a fun thing to watch from Hell.

Then, the shriveled up little bit of coal was ravaged and mutilated until it became this ugly, jagged stone (akin to a kidney stone, really) when he watched his one goal in life to have been jerked out from under him by a stupid, lower-class Saiyan who had no idea what he was dealing with and yet, somehow, managed to destroy Frieza on a whim. His blood oath to his father to avenge the Saiyan people, his _completely fucked-up coming of age period_ in which a sadist kept him around to beat up on, all of his rage, all of his strenth- and it meant nothing.

Vegeta hated Kakarot. He hated him more than he hated his own father, he hated him more than he hated himself, and he hated him _almost_ as much as he hated Frieza. There was a lot of fucking hatred there. And that hatred meant a lot of nothing too.

Either way, Vegeta had never really considered passing his bloodline on. Saiyans in general resisted other species' insistence on mating or forming life partnerships or family units. Saiyans loyal to the throne of Vegeta willingly gave up their children. A few grew weary of his father's connections with Frieza, along with the pirating of other planets, and they would try to hide their children. Things did not end well for such Saiyans. The king punished treachery severely.

Most parents trusted the state's ability to raise a generation of elite fighters. Poorer Saiyans would generally enroll one of their children in the Saiyan nursery and choose to sell their other children to pirate weak planets. Children who were not sold off to grow and fend for themselves, as Kakarot was, were placed in the ranks of the junior army. As it turned out, plenty of wealthy fathers and mothers raised their own children from afar, handling the nurseries or early stages of training.

Vegeta was such a child himself, having an intimate relationship with his mother, a high-ranking general who never once acknowledged their relationship. There were no Saiyan mothers. Bloodlines strictly followed the male, and men were free to take different mates. The King was fascinated with the skill of the general, on the battlefield and off, took her for himself, and when she threatened to abort the child lest she take time from the field, he threatened to have her stripped of her military honors and sentenced to death for treachery. The King was not a great romantic. Embittered, the General went through with the pregnancy, quietly moved out of the sight of any prying eyes. The General's identity as Mother of the Heir was well-concealed, at least to Vegeta.

The General received many honors as the bearer of the King's first born son, but was enraged to find that as young Vegeta grew and she returned to battle, the King again ordered that she personally oversee much of Vegeta's formative education. When Vegeta _had learned_ that _that awful woman_ was his kin, his stomach turned in a way that made him know it was true. When Vegeta discovered that Trunks, _that awful boy_ from the _goddamned future,_ was his son, he was horrified. The boy had so many feelings, and regardless of what had happened in that stupid timeline, Bulma had raised him to be a whiny, Kakarot-worshipping **nerd** with some real issues. Vegeta didn't really want to have to live through the making of another whiny, Kakarot-worshipping **nerd** with issues.

Although, Bulma did mother. The Earth-mother thing was interesting. He had a mother, apparently. Sort of.

Unbeknownst to Vegeta, the General was his mother rather than a royal concubine, and the unfortunate young prince argued and whined and fought bitterly with the tall (as far as he could remember, anyway), dismissive woman. Vegeta recalled being furious at the idea of subjected to the command of a woman, while the King insisted with a laugh that Vegeta ought to be grateful to the General for taking time out of the battlefield to _force_ him to walk, to form a ki blast, to _dodge._

While he supposed, upon retrospect, that his birth mother's status as a high-ranking military official was pleasing, but even so, _that woman…_

Cringe _._ Kakarot's woman was horrible. His father's woman was horrible. 

Once, over dinner Vegeta groaned that the stupid General made him clean up the bodies of all of the Saibamen he killed, all over some cocky comment he made to her. She turned on the gravity of the chamber and for hours Vegeta struggled to peel blood and bodies from her chambers.

" _And you think anyone else could do this job?" The King asked over his goblet of wine, laughing._

It hardly would've mattered if he'd known that the General was his mother; he would have hated her too.

Fathers would be reunited with sons on the battlefield decades later, and some men took great pride in their sons, while others rejected them violently. Vegeta had the latter experience, with the future- **nerd-** boy, and he paid dearly for rejecting Trunks when he died in the line of battle. The pain Vegeta felt from watching his son fall to the ground, given a death unceremonious and without honor, haunted him.

The prince didn't really realize how unique his upbringing was. He was waited on hand-and-foot as a child. He could only remember the shadows on his father's face, although Nappa loved to chat about the Saiyan race and culture, as if remembering would bring Planet Vegeta back. Nappa always spoke of the King with adulation, but Vegeta hated his guts. All of the failures of the Saiyans and their eventual collapse seemed to fall squarely on his father's shoulders.

Even so, he wasn't exactly sure what Bulma wanted him to do with the child. It didn't even have a purpose, it was just there to eat and be a nuisance.

No one thing broke Vegeta's heart. The culmination of fear and humiliation, shame and rage and hatred contained in one little body, stronger than half the adults, resulted in the brutal breaking of Vegeta's heart. He didn't even _care_ anymore, least of all for himself.

Such was the state of the man who could not come to terms with his growing ties to a woman and the son they shared.

On the other hand, Bulma's heart wasn't dead and gone in quite the same way, but the woman's cynicism led her to believe there was no point in being all sentimental about boyfriends and lovers, anyway, and half the time she felt resentful of the pure, chaste love Goku and ChiChi seemed to share. She felt more heartbroken over her romantic indifference than anything, that even when she shared a bed with an alien warrior, her heart didn't know if it felt _love_ for him. Or even that he felt love for her. Or if it even mattered at all.

Bulma's world was complicated, and in times like this she had only one person to talk to. Maybe Goku could always be expected to save the day, but this guy was the one who took her calls.

 _Ring. Ring._

She waited for the line to pick up. It did; he always picked up, even when she couldn't sleep at five in the morning.

"Hey?" A groggy voice.

Bulma sucked in air. "Hey. I needed to ask you something."

The quick reply: "Yeah, sure. Is everything okay?"

"I needed to ask you about Vegeta."

"...Why?" The tone changed and Yamcha's loving, protective tone turned cold.

"I," Bulma started, taking another breath, "I was wondering what you think about Vegeta... and me?"

The outrage was apparent, but Yamcha took the bait. He sat up in bed. "Okay, Bulma." He said, quietly, darkly. "I love you, as my first girlfriend and as one of my best friends, so I'll tell you what I think about your deal with Vegeta."

Bulma swallowed, twirling a pen on the other side of the phone nervously.

"I think that when human beings weren't good enough or strong enough or smart enough or rich enough for you, and you realized you really couldn't have Goku, you saw Vegeta as an available replacement and now you've shamelessly cashed in on the psychopath who once willngly killed half of your friends insteady of sticking by the people who have loved and supported you for _years_."

Ouch.

"So... then you don't think I should marry Vegeta?" Bulma asked, quietly, closing her eyes, waiting for the groan of pain and aggravation to inevitably escape Yamcha's lips. If anyone was going to talk her out of this, it was him.

* * *

 **-GB**


End file.
